Beverage Applications

Biohawk Australia’s technology has been designed to improve the palatability of common drinks, improve the overall quality of the drinks during the production process and to remove molecules that cause food allergy and intolerance by:

• Removing the very astringent tannins that are stabilized in plant material by a particular class of proteins called “proline-rich proteins” (PRPs) that normal digestive enzymes cannot digest
• Digesting the normally digestion-resistant bitter peptides that are proline-rich
• Increasing the nutrient value of the drink by digesting PRPs that encapsulate energy molecules, vitamins and minerals making them unavailable to be metabolized efficiently and by increasing the total protein in the drink by solubilizing insoluble proteins
• Digesting the digestion-resistant PRPs in the plant material that hypersensitize the immune system of a high proportion of the population causing food allergy and intolerance and the associated numerous autoimmune diseases
• Remove the need for sugar to be added to some drinks to hide their natural bitter taste.

This applies to wine, juices, whisky, beer, tea, coffee and drinking chocolate.

Fining Wine

In the creation of a wine from grapes, it is general practice to reduce some of the tannins and proteins by adding a fining agent. Some of these fining agents present an additional serious challenge for people with food intolerance and allergies because they come from products such as wheat (gluten), milk (casein or pasteurized milk), egg white (albumin), fish (isinglass), and marine alginates. Crudely, it is equivalent to adding milk to a cup of tea to make it not as tannic. The PRPs in the fining agent compete with the grape’s natural PRPs in the binding to tannins and separates the tannin and the natural grape protein which drop out of solution. The fining process has to be managed exceptionally carefully to ensure the true character of the grape is not removed from the wine. Because of the unique properties of Biohawk’s refine, the wine maker is able to specifically target the major problem confronting the wine, the proline-rich proteins, and to fine the wine retaining its true, mature character, and this can be done very rapidly removing the requirement for very long cellaring to achieve maturity.

Biohawk has developed technology for each of the other types of beverages.

The gingers in refine have the GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) classification and the aqueous extract is a permitted additive to foods and medicinals, and to beverages as the processing aid is a food with a protease enzyme.

To discuss licensing the technology and the supply of the products or to login to our commercial products page, please complete our enquiry form and we will contact you within 7 working days.